Well, this is going to be awful

Jude knew it was going to be awful. In fact, pretty much no possible outcome was anything less then terrible. The very best case scenario was still awful.

He'd gotten there early, ordered a coffee, and then grabbed a table off against the wall. Broen would show up when he did, and Jude fully expected him to be there a bit early, scouting around at an inch tall and looking for trouble. That was kind of his thing. You could never tell when Broen was there or not.

Jude's arm was working--at least Giltenn had given him that much--but he was keeping it tucked in his hoodie pocket instead anyway.

He wasn't scared. Or at the very least he was going to keep on insisting he wasn't scared, even though he looked like he'd eaten something bad. The fact that Broen had a tendency to just pop up in the most literal sense possible? That didn't help either. He'd gotten better at it--he wasn't going to jump every time Broen appeared out of thin air--but his brain still jumped a bit, taking a moment to catch and process what he was saying.

No suit. Somehow that made things easier.

"It's nerves, not fear," Jude countered, entirely pointlessly. It wouldn't matter. Broen was going to make fun of him regardless.

There was a moment where Jude's brain said nope, this is a bad idea. Where he almost, for a moment, considered just getting up and leaving. Going and finding someone else. Maybe Rory.

But that would be stupid.

"I wanted to ask you for something," Jude said, and then before Broen could interject with something awful, continued. "I'm awful about second guessing myself. I can handle it in combat, in life-or-death situations, but normally? I can't. And you can. So I wanted to ask you to teach me that. To teach me how to... not do that."

To not be him.

Jude was expecting the but. Really, he'd have been actually afraid if there wasn't a but, because that meant Broen already had something in mind, and that was gaurenteed to be awful. It was nice that Broen wasn't, you know, beating around the bush or anything. He wasn't going to drag it out. He wasn't going to ask why me, Boyscout? and make Jude explain the obvious truth they both already knew.

So it went without saying that Jude was prepared. Not with money. But with something else.

"I'm sure you noticed in the community center," Jude said. "But I've started being able to... detect other people's powers. Like, right now, the gold eyes make it obvious that you've got Rory's powers, but I can also tell that's the only power you've got. You gave up the other one, so you're sitting at full."

The difference in how gold his eyes were was... less than obvious, to say the least.

"So I can offer that. If you want something specific, I can find it. Assuming it even exists on the island." He did have one more thing to sweeten the deal, but he was keeping that in his pocket.

He'd taken it? He'd taken it. Being fair, it was a really good deal. Really good. Even so, a part of him had expected Broen to be an ass about it anyway.

"I guess... perfectionism? I'm worried I'm doing the wrong thing. Like, even this right here. I was worried this was going to be a mistake, and I had to psyche myself up for it. It's not like I'm freezing up in the head of the moment, it's making big decisions. In the heat of the moment, I don't have time to think about things as much. What if I do the wrong thing? What if the decision isn't the right one? And then I loop."

He'd obviously had some time to think about it.

There was nothing he hadn't heard before. Not really. It was all the same stuff. But hearing it from someone he knew was different.

Broen's honesty might have seemed awful to most people, but it had an upside: Jude didn't think he'd jerk him around and waste his time. He didn't speak right away, seeming to let it process.

Stop being afraid. Stop worrying about failure.

Jude nodded, letting it sink in. "Did you ever do that? Like, get convinced you were making the wrong decision, and you needed to stop and rethink."

Broen sure as hell was like like that now, but Jude had no idea what he'd been like before.